“If they (regulator) tell us to do things that we believe are anti-consumer, we will definitely challenge,” Truecaller chief executive officer Rishit Jhunjhunwala told Mint in an interview on Friday.
Jhunjhunwala said the company would first take up the issue with the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), contending that numbers in the designated series—1600 for banks and insurers, and 140 for promotional calls—are increasingly being misused for spam calls.
“If one lakh people on Truecaller are saying this is spam and yet we are not allowed to mark it as spam, then how are consumers benefiting from this?” he said, adding that Truecaller has no commercial interest in this.
“It is one very simple thing — Truecaller’s promise to its consumers and what consumers trust Truecaller for today. Trust is broken because we’ve been told to suppress what a consumer is saying. That is the real problem,” he added.
Earlier, in a post on X on 8 July, the Truecaller CEO had said that a total of 74 million manual blocking actions have been taken against these series in the past eight months. The current situation is that Truecaller users actively block 400,000 calls from 140 series and 125,000 calls from the 1600 series every day, he said.
The Truecaller app uses community feedback to identify and flag suspected spam calls. It also offers a paid ‘Truecaller for Business’ service that allows companies to display their verified name, logo and the purpose of the call, helping customers distinguish genuine business calls from unknown numbers.
Last year, Trai had mandated that banks and insurance companies will have to use 1600 series for all service and transactional calls, while telemarketers are required to use the 140 series for promotional calls.
“A key objective of assigning designated series for these important communications is to make such calls trustworthy for the customers/ citizen,” Trai said in a release on Friday, adding that any tagging, blocking or filtering of the calls from these numbers are not allowed.
Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller had complied with Trai’s rollout of the designated number series as a responsible participant in the telecom ecosystem, since reducing spam calls would benefit both consumers and the company.
However, Jhunjhunwala added that Truecaller told the regulator that blanket whitelisting these numbers — without being allowed to show as spam if users mark them as such — is a wrong approach. “Because if legitimate calls were being made from 1600 series and if 140 series calls were really being made with consent, then we would not get block reports. But we got lakhs of block reports,” he said.
Government officials, who requested anonymity, told Mint that Trai has also asked Meity to designate the regulator as an authorised entity under the IT Act so that it can take action against apps like Truecaller if they do not comply with any regulations. Else, the regulator has to request Meity to take any action.
Telecom analyst Parag Kar said Truecaller exists to give users context on unknown numbers so they don’t miss calls that matter. Trai’s 140 and 1600 series were meant to provide that same context by design — a call from these ranges should already signal “this is a legitimate business or bank,” he said.
“If that system were working without misuse, customers would have no reason to tag these numbers as spam or block them, and they simply wouldn’t show up on Truecaller’s radar. The fact that over 80% of these calls are now being tagged or blocked is direct evidence of misuse — proof that Trai’s own verification and enforcement behind these number series isn’t robust enough to stop bad actors from exploiting them,” Kar added.
When asked if the company is facing any impact on its enterprise vertical, which offers ‘verified badge’ to businesses, Jhunjhunwala said, “We did see some dip because enterprises migrated to 140,160 but nothing material that would change the game for us.”
“There are some businesses that say they will pay telcos for business CNAP (Calling Name Presentation) and in fact telcos are the ones that will remove spam markings on a number if you pay them, we don’t do that,” he said, adding that even if a business is using verified services on Truecaller, they will still be labelled as a spammer on the platform if they engage in spamming activities.
According to Truecaller’s financial report for the January-March quarter, the company had 334 million monthly active users in India in that period, out of a worldwide total of 463.2 million monthly active users excluding iOS.
India’s contribution to Truecaller’s revenue has been dipping over the past few years. In 2025, India contributed about 69% or about ₹1,300 crore to the company’s global topline of about ₹1,890 crore. In 2024, India’s revenue share was at 72.5%, according to the company’s financial statements.
In the January-March quarter, Truecaller, which is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, said its net sales in India decreased by 41% year-on-year to SEK 214.4 million (about ₹212 crore).
It said the reason was revenue loss from the real money gaming (RMG) segment linked to the Indian Premier League in cricket, and the impact of the conflict in West Asia. Truecaller also said the growth in India for Truecaller for Business also slowed due to increased competition.
“A key objective of assigning designated series for these important communications is to make such calls trustworthy for the customers/ citizen,” Trai said in a release on Friday, adding that any tagging, blocking or filtering of the calls from these numbers are not allowed. However, customers can allow or block promotional calls originating from 140 series numbers by registering their preference on the Trai’s Do Not Disturb (DND) registry, Trai said.
